This is a blog that I started in october 2010, mainly for discussing my ideas on the economy, taxation and politics. Please add comments - I'll do my best to reply. If you are new, I would recommend watching one of my YouTube presentations (in French or English). You can download a fully indexed pdf version (over 600 pages) here.

4 Jan 2012

10 questions for Mario Draghi and the ECB

I've just sent the following list of 10 questions to Mario Draghi and the ECB. I'll let you know if I get a reply.

I would be very grateful if you could answer a few specific questionsabout the ECB's policy of making money available to banks.

According to the press, 523 different banks applied for ECB funds on the21st of December.

1) Where can I find a list of the banks to which the ECB provided money?2) Where can I find a list of the amounts of money provided for each bank?3) What percentage of the applications were funded in full?4) How long did it take the ECB to decide whether to provide funds to a given bank?5) What checks are made on the suitability of a bank before consenting to make such a loan?6) Was there any limit on the total amount of money that could be provided via this mechanism?7) If not, does this mean that the ECB could print an arbitrarilly large amount of money?8) Was any money provided to "publicly owned credit institutions" as permitted by paragraph 2 of Article 123 of the Lisbon treaty?9) If such a publicly owned credit institution was to supply the money to a government such as the Greek government in order for that government to pay off its debts to the financial markets, would the ECB object?